Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
Good power pop knows no specific era. Sounding like the Bay City Rollers and Weezer, if they hung out in the Paisley Underground, Damian Hagger takes the best elements of past and present pop and makes them universally satisfying. - music.download.com
Damian Hagger comes in like a breath of fresh air. This young British born singer/songwriter doesn't just write music, he writes songs! You know, the kind that stick in your head long after you've heard them...lyrics, melody, hooks. From the pumped up power pop of the title track, to the lush textures of "Butterfly", Half My Mind is an excellent debut effort from an excellent musician. Features co-producer/drummer extraordinare, Dave Uosikkinen (Hooters, Alice Cooper). - Emusic.com
Discography
Half My Mind (2004)
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
English born singer-songwriter, Damian Hagger, got a 4-track recorder for his fourteenth birthday. It started his passion for writing and recording music. After high school in Singapore and South Africa (where Damian spent the majority of his childhood and teens), he was accepted to study at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA, USA. Damian graduated cum laude from Berklee in 1998 with a Bachelor of Music in Contemporary Writing/Production and Music Business.
Damian’s teens were spent writing "friend and family" releases of instrumental music and songs. By the time he was sixteen he had written, arranged, performed and produced his first full-studio 8 song EP, Maidez. In 1997 he released a 7 song EP of his instrumental music titled The Ripple Effect. The album gathered over 50,000 downloads on the largest independent music portal on the internet, MP3.com (before the site was bought by CNET in 2003).
In 2003, Damian co-wrote and recorded a 7 song EP titled You Must Be Kidding, with critically acclaimed Power Pop outifit, Big Kid. One of the songs he co-wrote, "Pop Song", was a top ten finalist in the USA national songwriting competition (http://www.songwriting.net/winners.html).
2004 marks Damian’s solo debut as a singer-songwriter. Sardonically titled Half My Mind, the 12 song disc features the talents and production expertise of drummer, Dave Uosikkinen (The Hooters, Alice Cooper) and covers a writing period of over two years and was over a year in the making. Despite the titles seemingly scattered and disorderly suggestion, no expense was spared in the articulation and performance of the dozen originals, recorded in San Diego over a sixteen month period.
From the albums pumped up, overdriven, power pop, title-track opener to the T Rex-esque pop-rock sequels, Half My Mind, presents an alternative to the mainstream sounds of today. Relying on traditional recording techniques and instrumentation, and featuring very few "artificial" sounds, the album delivers a potent mix of contemporary pop rock songs with a modern-organic sound.
Links
